A little later on, Mrs Garrick and Hannah More were invited to an assembly at Mrs Thrale's. "Just as my hair was dressed, came a servant to forbid our coming, for that Mr Thrale was dead. A very few hours later, and he would have died in this assembly. What an awful event. He was in the prime of life, but had the misfortune to be too rich, and to keep too sumptuous a table, at which he indulged too freely. He was a sensible and respectable man. I am glad the poor lady has, in her distress, such a friend as Dr Johnson; he will suggest the best motives of consolation." A few days after this event, "we were a small and very choice party at Bishop Shipley's. Lord and Lady Spencer, Lord and Lady Althorpe, Sir Joshua, Langton, Boswell, Gibbon, and, to my agreeable surprise, Dr Johnson, were there." This was the first meeting between Johnson and Mrs Garrick since the latter's bereavement, and, on the next morning, Johnson paid a lengthy visit to the ladies at No. 5 Adelphi Terrace. "On Mrs Garrick's telling him she was always more at her ease with persons who had suffered the same loss with herself, he said that was a comfort she could seldom have, considering the superiority of his [Garrick's] merit, and cordiality of their union. He bore his strong testimony to the liberality of Garrick. He reproved me with pretended sharpness for reading _Les Pensées de Pascal_, or any of the Port Royal authors; alleging that, as a good Protestant, I ought to abstain from books written by Catholics. I was beginning to stand upon my defence, when he took me with both hands, and with a tear running down his cheeks, 'Child,' said he, with the most affecting earnestness, 'I am heartily glad that you read pious books, by whomsoever they may be written.'" Then came the famous dinner party which Dr Johnson attended, and that was his last visit to the Adelphi, for, during Hannah More's visits to town in the subsequent years, prior to Johnson's death in 1784, the Doctor was ailing. So, with this picture in the mind's eye of the worthy Doctor, in sentimental mood, now lecturing Hannah More, anon entertaining Mrs Garrick and her friends, and, finally, looking across the Adelphi railings at the Thames, as he thought tenderly of his dead friends, we take leave of Samuel Johnson.